Forest Landscape Restoration

What steps can be taken to restore ecological integrity to rainforests in the Asia-Pacific? Photo: Kate Evans/CIFOR.

Center for International Forestry ResearchApril 28, 2017

Restoring deforested and degraded forest landscapes has become an urgent policy priority. The disappearance and degradation of forests around the world is impacting biodiversity, livelihoods, economic growth and climate change resilience.

CIFOR will build on an existing body of knowledge of Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) from CIFOR and partners to produce influential knowledge products and tools that assess the performance of FLR activities in terms of their environmental and social outcomes. We will evaluate FLR’s generation of ecosystem services and the sharing of benefits among economically vulnerable social groups, including ethnic minorities and female community members.

CIFOR’s review of existing programs that use FLR to produce ecosystem services and improve livelihoods will aggregate, generate and operationalize knowledge to share in accessible formats and fora targeting decision makers through well selected boundary partners. Outputs will elucidate the links between FLR programs and key environmental and socioeconomic interests, including biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, water and anti-erosion services, production of forest products, and the functioning of credit and compensatory schemes bringing economic opportunity to local communities and households.

Promoters and implementers of FLR will be equipped with a comprehensive and inclusive understanding of the many models and ecological and social best practices available to date. To achieve this, CIFOR will coordinate closely with Knowledge and Tools for Forest Landscape Restoration project (KNOWFOR) partners, Program on Forests (PROFOR) and IUCN, to ensure that geographic synergies are maximised for dissemination of knowledge products and policy outreach, and to bring CIFOR’s evidence-based approach to bear on the work done by all partners on the theme of FLR.